


beginning of always

by Anonymous



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:14:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25728766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: “It would make great headlines for tomorrow, this.Harry Styles and Niall Horan dead in traffic accident. Stole their own tourbus and crashed it into a tree.”“I didn’tstealit,” Harry protests, laughter in his voice. “It’s ours. And I asked for the keys.”Or: It's 2015. Niall and Harry are in love; they always will be.
Relationships: Niall Horan/Harry Styles
Comments: 3
Kudos: 72
Collections: Anonymous





	beginning of always

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of FICTION. I have no idea of what Niall, Harry or the fandom have been up to since 2016 (nor do I want to know), but back then we were all firm in our belief that fanfic was purely for fun. If you're going to mistake it for reality, please don't read it.

Harry has become the most reliable part of home that Niall knows; his mere presence a reminder of who Niall is beneath all the layers of fame and gossip that try to stick to him like dust every day.

Harry is kind. Warm. He beams in the public’s eye, but sheds a softer, more golden and entirely comforting glow in the shadow of the world. It’s a glow that Niall thrives in, because he’s one of few who gets to see it, who gets to see Harry peeled down to raw and unedited emotion. More than that, though, Harry is wild. Carries a seed of reckless, encompassing joy that manifests itself in curiosity, and it matches Niall. Is something that the entire band bonded over when they first came together, but that only seems to have stuck permanently within him and Harry.

With Niall it manifests itself in his ever-present need to have fun, to enjoy the perks of his life, to do the most of every situation. With Harry, it takes on more vivid forms; drags Harry out of comfort and into adventure, whether that adventure be a midnight jog around Paris, a venture to a local production of some obscure play, or a dirt bike race around a muddy field in the middle of nowhere. Harry wants to see things, and he doesn’t let anything hold him back. He barely lets anyone know that he’s going at all.

It shouldn’t feel like abandonment, but it does. Makes Niall curse himself and wonder when he came to depend so much on Harry next to him, when the gravitational pull became so strong that he feels lost without Harry there to orbit around.

“Niall?” comes out in a sleepy drawl, now, where Harry is tilting his upper body in through the hotel door, keycard hanging loosely from between two slender fingers. It’s a murmur laced with affection that makes Niall’s chest feel full of contentment.

“Yeah, Harry?” Niall hears himself murmur back, just as soft and just as affectionate – his heart heavy upon his own tongue and beating pointedly as soon as he’s looking up at Harry in the doorway. “You staying with me tonight?”

They usually get one room to share these days; have forgotten how to be alone, how to work without the other’s gentle presence as a background noise, a comfort to lean into. He doesn’t know why they got one each tonight.

“No, I just…” Harry tapers off. He takes a step inside, closes the door behind him with a gentle click and frowns down at his boots for a moment. “I was going to head out, actually.”

Niall has to swallow at that; his heart full of disappointment, almost too big to press down his throat. The aftertaste is bitter. Acrid. He forces one corner of his mouth to tilt upwards in a half-smile that wouldn’t have fooled Harry if he’d been looking back, and says, “Oh, okay.”

Harry scuffs one boot against the other, toes pointed inwards to highlight the foreign sense of awkwardness in the room.

“I just,” Harry repeats, finally looking up. “Do you wanna come with me?”

It’s spoken hesitantly; shows that Harry wants Niall to answer a certain way but is scared that he won’t, that he’ll say no. Because after all this time, after everything they’ve been through and beneath the two hearts that they both wear upon their sleeves, Harry still cares about what Niall wants – fears the very idea of not being exactly that anymore. As though it isn’t a universal truth at this point that Niall Horan will always be in love with Harry Styles, no matter where the road takes them in the future.

He doesn’t say anything back, doesn’t ask where Harry is going, but simply rises from his bed and follows the hopeful smile, the beautiful depiction of love upon Harry’s face when they brush against each other in the doorway.

*

The seed of reckless joy – the sensation of being perfectly at home with this man – blossoms wildly ten minutes later. He’s stood on top of the front stair of their tour bus as it rolls through the city, laughing himself weightless with his eyes glued to Harry behind the wheel. He has no idea where they’re going – knows it won’t be too far, that they’ve got press to do in the morning and a sound check to get to after lunch – but it feels so utterly careless. Feels so right with Harry beside him where he’s smiling into the night before them with all signs of exhaustion completely faded from his expression.

“When the hell did you learn how to drive a bus anyway?”

“Didn’t,” Harry grins, briefly glancing over at Niall. “Seems to be working pretty well, though.”

Niall shakes his head, laughs some more. Says, “It would make great headlines for tomorrow, this. _Harry Styles and Niall Horan dead in traffic accident. Stole their own tourbus and crashed it into a tree_.”

“I didn’t _steal_ it,” Harry protests, laughter in his voice. “It’s ours. And I asked for the keys.”

“Well that makes it better, then,” Niall grumbles, though his following bout of laughter mixes with Harry’s – becomes a melody far better sounding than anything they could have heard if the radio was switched on. He thrives in it, in the lightness of it all, and in the way his heart’s beating with joy and continuous affection.

*

Harry slows them down to a stop a few minutes later, parks on an empty parking lot and leans back in his seat with a content sigh.

Niall leans over and taps his cheek with a gentle finger, asks, “What are we doing here?”

Harry shrugs. Looks up at Niall and smiles, and it shouldn’t take Niall’s breath from him, shouldn’t be so utterly beautiful, still, when he knows that smile by heart, but it is, does, will always be. Will never fail to make his mind go blank when he sees it.

“Are we going out?”

“No,” Harry says, tilting his head at Niall as though the very idea is ridiculous. “There’s nothing out there.”

Niall frowns at him, lets his hand fall down to Harry’s shoulder; his thumb against the skin above the neckline of his sweater. The ends of Harry’s hair brush kindly over the back of his fingers. “Then why…?”

“Just wanted to get away for a bit,” Harry hums at him. “Be with you. Remember what it used to be like. We never sleep on this thing anymore, I kind of miss it. The intimacy of it, of it just being me and you.”

“We still have it, Harry.”

“We won’t, soon,” Harry reminds him, as though Niall could ever forget, could ever stop dreading the final day of this, of them, of having a permanent home for his heart to cling to.

Niall swallows. Pulls himself together in the face of Harry’s wide eyes, his hopeful expression. He knows it’s a meaningful gesture; a desperate try to give them both as many moments to remember as possible, and Niall would be a fool to pass up on it, to allow any sense of fear for the future creep in and ruin the now.

“Alright then,” he hums, smiling. “Come on. Wanna sleep here?”

Harry grins back at him, takes Niall’s hand in his and stands up. “Among other things.”

Niall curls his fingers around Harry’s, familiar and right. Puts his entire weight behind it when he tugs Harry down the aisle and mutters, “Fucking _idiot_.”

Harry makes them tea in the lounge, and they sit on the same, narrow sofa in there with their legs twined together. It’s something they’ve done countless times before, but this time they’re not rolling along a highway or rushing down a country road; there’s no humming of the engine beneath them and no post-show adrenaline fading slowly within them as they sit. It’s just them. Their quiet murmurings and the steady, comforting sounds of brushing fabrics, of Harry’s breathing and of Niall’s heart thriving in the midst of it.

After a stretch of silence, Harry reaches a hand out. It’s covered up to the knuckles by the sleeve of his sweater, but his fingertips peek out curiously, and he presses one to the knot of bone in Niall’s wrist; taps curiously there when he says, “We’ll be writing songs about each other in the future, won’t we?”

“Isn’t that what we’re doing already?” Niall tries to joke, but it falls a bit flat. Tastes odd upon his tongue and doesn’t make Harry smile in reaction. He adds, quieter; “Yeah, guess so.”

It does feel like an inevitability. If he ever writes again, Harry will be there, in mind and heart and fingertips. Most of his guitars know Harry intimately these days; they won’t pretend that Niall is longing for anyone else, will make his emotions transparent for the world to devour.

“Will you tell me, before?” Harry asks him. “Send me an email or something before you put anything out into the world?”

“Send you a—” Niall sputters. “What the _hell_ , Harry, we’ll still talk to each other. I’ll send you every damn demo if I ever get that far.”

It helps a little; eases the odd atmosphere.

“Yeah, okay,” Harry grins half-heartedly, his tone self-deprecating when he adds, “Guess I just don’t want to lose you.”

It’s honest. Raw. A side of Harry that Niall is one of few people in the world to see, to care for, to reassure. He takes the now empty cup from Harry’s other hand and sets the pair of them down on the floor blindly. Sits back up under the comforting weight of Harry’s legs over his own lap and asks, “Why would you, ever?”

Harry shrugs, gaze cast downward. And it hits Niall, then, sudden and harsh, that he’s going to have to fight for this. To keep Harry in his life on a permanent basis. Because the Harry in front of him may have changed a lot over the years, but there are still those unchangeable seeds within him; of wildness, of joy, of lust for adventure, but also of sensitivity. This everlasting tendency to sink into emotion and never quite rise from it again, to linger in there and to carry a lungful of saltwater tears and troublesome thoughts with him.

Harry may very well walk right off towards the horizon after this is all over, just to be the one who walks away; to make sure that he doesn’t have to see anyone else leave. He might hurt himself just so Niall won’t.

“Hey,” Niall says. Stern and serious and terrified as he takes Harry’s chin in his hand and forces eye contact. “I love you.”

It’s the bravest he’s ever been; almost matches the time Harry first told him those same words. The two of them together could rule the world like this, powered by each other. Knights in spotlighted armors, shouting their love for each other across stages all over the world – though isn’t that what they’ve been doing for years?

Harry smiles at him, then, genuine and beautiful. “Love you, too, Niall.”

Niall gives in after that. Kisses Harry for the first time since too-early this morning and allows himself to sink right into it. He savors the soft noise that Harry makes in reaction; the way Harry yields under Niall’s touch and keeps smiling into the kiss.

He loves that he can be this for Harry; a distraction, a comfort, and something to fully immerse in. Loves that they can come together like this, become _one_ even more than they already are when the rest of the world is watching. And he cannot see this ever going away between them, can’t imagine that time or distance or silence will ever take this away from them. He won’t let go.

They kick one of the cups over when they get up, can hear it clinking against the other one where it rolls over the carpeted aisle and thumps against the wall. It dispels the final, lingering dregs of tension between them – makes them laugh into each other’s mouths as they tumble clumsily back towards the bunk area.

It’s sweet. Beautiful. _Them_ , the way they’ve always been together. A unit of NiallandHarry that, for another night, carries no expiration date.


End file.
